Watch your language!

I write for magazines and online providers all across the world. One day, I'm typing a Canadian article, another an Australian one and later in the week my work gets sent off to the UK and the USA. I'm constantly juggling color/colour, labor/labour and tricky ones like jewelry/jewellery. It's confusing to say the least and the last thing I want to do is to miss obvious misspellings. That's why I rely on Word's language tools.

Prior to Word 2007 I can set the language for a document by selecting it and choose Tools, Language, Set Language and choose the proofing language.

In Word 2007, of course, everything is different but it's easy to find - thank you Microsoft!

In Word 2007, select your document (Control + A works just fine) and click the language indicator on the Status bar - the Language dialog appears and you can choose the language to use to proof the text.

Languages and Word 2007

I write articles for magazines all over the world. One day I’ll wake up and think Canadian and other times I’m English or an Aussie or American.

Each country spells differently, it can be color or colour or honor or honour and there are really tricky ones like dialing and dialling. To help out, I use the Language options in Word. It used to be easy in Word 2003, select the document using Control + A, and apply the language to it using the Tools options.

I spent a horrible amount of time in Word 2007 en-route to New Jersey recently looking for the Language tool. Yikes, could not find it anywhere. Ring the alarm bells, I need this feature. My solution, use the Customize tool and add the Language option to the Quick Access toolbar. Now it’s where you want it, handy and accessible. Bummer it can’t be found on the Ribbon anywhere but at least this now works and probably it's better than even in Word 2003.